Everybody on this planet has a spiritual support team. This group is our backup in the game of life. Image by Artie_Navarre
Entering the material world is like taking on a deadly mission for the CIA or MI-6. Pretend you are the next James Bond. You come in with certain assets and talents from previous missions, but are placed in situations out of your element. But you are not alone in your mission. You have backup. Someone will brief you on your mission, outline your goals, and warn you of the pitfalls.
Another person, Q in the James Bond movies, gives you your equipment. He explains all the special things you can do. You will meet up with other agents in the field who will pass new information and orders to you. Some agents are seen and others remain in the shadows, secretly sending you codes.
As you continue your career, you make your own contacts with other agents and agencies. You can communicate to headquarters through special equipment, focusing on frequencies only you and your team know. You have special codes and signals worked out. They are there for you. Without them, your mission is much harder.
In the Real World...
In the real world, our team is made up of our spirit allies. We come into the world with this team, and build on it through our spiritual practices and experiences. We build our team and it changes as we change our beliefs. Those deeper on the spiritual path, with active, daily pursuit, will attract more allies, just as Native Americans believe that although everyone has a spirit ally of some type, shamans have more.
If you pursue spirit allies and wish to complete your life goals, more allies will come because you are helping them complete their goals. The relationship works both ways.
A lot of the Native American spirits are making themselves known to seekers living in the Americas, regardless of genetic background. Spirits who lived as shamans and medicine men are teaching their wisdom by becoming spirit guides.
The spiritual support team contains many roles. You might find one ally performing many roles at once or have a very large and highly specialized team, where each ally has a single function and never works beyond that realm. Allies also change roles as we progress in our development.
The Guide Is the Most Popular Spirit Ally
The first and most popular spirit is the guide. This ally comes to help us through life's tough transitions. The guide is really our first spirit friend, one who talks to us on an equal level. Once we open the lines of communication with our spirit guide, we can talk about our issues and their solutions. Guides offer powerful, life-changing advice. Be prepared to hear the answers to the questions you ask.
Guides are an opportunity for you to simply talk out your day and share with someone if you have difficulty talking to those around you. Like a good friend they will not offer solutions if not asked, preferring you to figure it out on your own. Guides do offer encouragement, though. They are there to help you find the way.
Guides are not a replacement for human contact and will encourage you to make new friends and meet new people. They want you to explore your life fully.
Not only are guides for spiritual and emotional support, but they are available for professional support and simple conversation. Many guides appear when I am doing a tarot reading for someone, giving me new information or pointing out things my conscious mind missed when explaining the cards. Other guides aid me in healing work. I see and feel them working next to me during a Reiki session. Guides help me in the classes I teach, urging me to cover a topic I normally would not cover because it fits the immediate needs of someone in the class.
These guiding spirits are readily available for simple discourse, giving direct information on somewhat spiritual topics, like explaining the human chakra system, herbalism, or hermetic philosophy. For those who think they are simply talking to themselves, these conversations will open your eyes. You will be amazed at how much information you can get from a guide on a topic you never studied. Then find a book on it and things will all fall into place. The information from your guide is correct, but they usually expand on the subject. If you are simply having an internal dialogue, how would you know such specific facts and concepts?
Guardians are Invoked for Protection
Doing security detail in our spiritual support team is the guardian. A guardian is any ally invoked for protection. The main criteria are that they have power and province over the physical to protect your body. Guardians protect our entire being, the physical along with the emotion, astral, mental, and spiritual bodies. Icelandic mages call these beings v?rdhr, or wardens. If the guardian has no power in the physical, then your flesh and blood can still get hurt.
Pagan gods and goddesses, ruling aspects of nature, appear as guardians, among other things. Many gods are called on for protection. They do not have to be from pagan mythology. Jesus Christ or Buddha can be called on for protection. Jesus is particularly powerful for banishing harmful spirits. Also, because Hebrew is a sacred, power language, speaking it can move energy. Any of the Hebrew names for God, like Yahweh, Jehovah, Shekena, or Adoni, can be called out for protection.
Guides and power animals serve as guardians. More traditional guardian allies are our guardian angels. Everyone has one. Angels need to be asked for help to maximize their protective skills, since they, like other allies, do not interfere with free will. Allies do not stop the games we play. You do not need to know their name; simply ask your guardian angel or spirit to protect you in times of danger. Recently my group was doing a ritual involving angels, everyone in the group commented that they felt or saw the presence of everyone else's guardian angels circling us.
The Higher Self
As everyone has a guardian or guardian angel, everyone has a higher self. The teaching of all religions, at the core, is that we are all divine beings. The path is to remember our divinity. We are all being challenged to live with our higher self more fully in the world and not be dragged down by harmful thoughts and emotions. That doesn't mean we suppress them. We acknowledge them, work through them, and move on. Anger, hate, jealousy, and resentment should never be held or ignored, but honored.
The higher self is the prime director of your spiritual support team. From this chief spirit ally, all others take their cue. No one but you knows what is best for you. If you invoke your higher self and ask your intentions to be correct and for your highest good, you are asking that things be worked into your own grand design.
As co-creators, our soul, our higher self, chose all the variables -- our bodies, parents, family, friends, situations. They are all perfect for our mission here; they are not random circumstances. Your higher self is in partnership with the Great Spirit. It makes no mistakes for you. Other spiritual beings on your team can have a different opinion. They guide you, but ideally your higher self has the final approval on everything. Allies are in constant communion with your higher aspect.
The more in alignment with your higher self you are, the easier things become. The world flows with you. Agonizing choices between extremes are a thing of the past. The right doors open. You still have challenges and face difficult circumstances, but you know it's your path and have a great conscious power to change your path to your liking. You are doing your dharma, your life's work.
The Shadow
Some consider the shadow self to be the lower self or psychic self, balancing the higher self, with no stigma or testing associated with it. Other traditions consider the shadow to be the antithesis of the Holy Guardian Angel or Higher Self, as an accumulation of all our "negative karma" or misdeeds. Also known as the Dweller on the Threshold, it must be confronted and defeated before deeper spiritual enlightenment can occur.
Personally, I see the shadow as part of our lower, psychic, and instinctive self, but it's the part of our power and ability that we fear and disassociate from. It is all the thoughts, feelings, and abilities we repress. It is a part of our unclaimed personal power.
To go deeper with your spirituality, you must recognize it, forgive it and yourself, and integrate it better into your own self-image. The shadow can have many layers, and you will develop a relationship with it on deeper levels as your own awareness expands.
Material Spirits
The last major component of your team is material spirits. These allies are devas, nature spirits, elementals, or the consciousness of your own body. These spirits rule in the material, physical world, but sometimes lack higher consciousness to guide their powers. They follow your instructions and programming. Most people are unaware of these spirits and let their own stray thoughts command these allies.
The material spirits have power over your body and health. Everyone has a deva that forms the structure of their body. Everyone has nature spirits to fill out the form. Our entire body, from major organs to individual cells and the DNA within, is conscious. If you continually tell yourself you feel like a mess, your body will give you a mess.
The body listens to every word of our internal dialogue. Positive affirmations are a way to counter this habitual programming. Tell your body you feel healthy, balanced, and beautiful. Reality follows thought. You are what you eat, but more importantly you are what you think.
Material spirits have power over our resources, like prosperity, career, and home. We have guides who help us formulate the best goals and career decisions. Houses and apartments have acquired their own presence, created by the family living in them. The energy and spirit there are usually marshaled into magic for home protection, health, and happiness. If you keep the home happy, it will help keep you happy. Elementals and spirits are called on in ritual magic to make intentions manifest in the material plane.
TEAMWORK
Spirit allies will take various forms and roles for your benefit. Allies may be very fluid, changing as you change. There is no deception in this. We simply see them in the forms most comfortable or needed, as indicated by our subconscious.
Spirit is free form. All beings past this side of the many veils are in touch with their multidimensional nature. The duty of our guides is to reawaken us to our own multidimensional existence. Part of each of us lives beyond the veils. Allies support us by opening new doorways in our consciousness.
As you work with the team, you discover each ally has very individual traits. Each has a specific personality. Each has an identity. These vibrations are recognized, either through their voice if you are clairaudient, or simply by their presence, even if you see no image of them. They have a unique energy signature to tune in to, and you are one of the few people who has a direct line to them.
Position of the Players
Often you can feel allies are in a particular space around you. Those individuals with many spirit allies are at times adamant about where the guide is, to their left, right, above them, below them, or off to the side. Guides seem to be whispering into the left ear or the right. The side of the body they appear on gives insight into the lessons they share.
The left side is controlled by the right side of the brain, which is more creative and intuitive and usually regarded as more feminine. Many guides work through these traits, since intuition and psychic powers go hand in hand. The left half of the brain controls the right side of the body. The characteristics considered more masculine, like logic, reason, and aggression are part of the left side of the brain.
Esoterically, we usually project energy from the right hand and receive energy from the left, unless we are left-handed. Once you understand the flow of energy, you can control the flow of energy from each hand and reverse it as needed.
If a guide appears lower to the ground or off to the side, it is probably working with grounding issues, health, and being comfortable in the physical realm and in your body. You need support and strength. When the guide is floating above your head, you are working with the mind and perception.
Size of the Team
The spiritual support team varies in size from person to person, being as few as one or as many as several dozen. When there is only one, that ally fills all the tasks in the entire team and tends to be a very versatile spirit.
The larger teams bring specialization, with one spirit having expertise in a particular topic, but no measurable information on other aspects of life.
Team Communication
Request that your allies work together. They might not start as a team, particularly if there are cultural or mythic differences among them. They need to communicate together to effectively help you. Most move in harmony, working out their differences and opinions beyond our perception of space and time.
When we communicate with them, they already know their group message. A small core forms, working together to fulfill the roles needed in a good team. One spirit ally takes the leading role and is in frequent contact. Other allies come and go as you need them. Some are always present, but when their talents are not needed, they fade into the background.
After a time of no contact, you start to forget them. Have no fear, spirits do not hold grudges as people do. Honor them and your experiences with them, but if they slip your mind, there is a reason.
I write down all my experiences with spirits and periodically review them. Like looking at a journal, reflecting on the year, I review the experiences with my allies. This way I honor our time together and value the spirit, even if we are no longer working together.
Blind Obedience
People who actively work with spirit allies in all forms most often stress that they are allies, no matter what you call them. They are friends, helpers, and guides, but equals. The relationship is like having a spiritual big brother or sister, or even aunt or uncle. Though you often follow their instructions, you are not meant to follow messages blindly, even when they come for our highest good. Allies offer help and work in partnership and cooperation with you. Ask questions for a better understanding.
Even when working with Great Spirit, or any other direct incarnation of the divine, like the gods and goddess from across the world, you do not have to follow blindly. Most of these beings come in unconditional love, and while they need to be respected, like all allies, they do not order.
Do not get into a submissive role with your allies because they do not want your blind obedience. Only harmful spirits want that. No growth comes from blind obedience.
Strong allies work for the highest good. They want you to live in love and happiness, doing what you need to do for your own transformation.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. ©2002.
http://www.redwheelweiser.com.
Article Source:
Spirit Allies: Meet Your Team from the Other Side
by Christopher Penczak.
From ancient Egyptians to modernday witches, King Solomon to Native American shamans, individuals throughout time have possessed the power to work with the spirit world. But it's not necessary to be a Tibetan holy man or ghost hunter to communicate with the other side. Everyone has friends beyond the veil, as author Christopher Penczak explains, "A spirit ally is a being in the unseen realms who, for whatever reason, decides to aid, befriend, protect, or teach us while we live our own Earthwalk." He dispels the shadowy ambiguity and fear surrounding the existence of these spiritual entities, shares compelling personal anecdotes, and offers straightforward techniquessuch as relaxation, automatic writing, and oracle interpretationto help readers contact their own guides. Through 30 simple exercises, Spirit Allies helps readers find their Power Animal, dream journey, speak with devas, communicate with ancestors and ascended masters, meet their personal spirit allies, and much more.
Info/Order this book. Also available as a Kindle edtion.
About the Author
Christopher Penczak was ordained in 2000 as a minister by the Universal Brotherhood Movement, Inc. He is also a part time faculty member at the North Eastern Institute of Whole Health and a founding member of the Gifts of Grace Foundation, a non-profit organization in New Hampshire made up of individuals from diverse spiritual backgrounds dedicated to joyful service to the local communities. He is the author of City Magick. Christopher lives in Salem, New Hampshire. Visit his website at www.ChristopherPenczak.com.
